


Bring the Ocean to You

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff and Slight Angst, Humanstuck, Karkat and Gamzee are both trying to be good boyfriends, M/M, Mentions of Attempted Revolution, Merpeople, Sea witches, Swearing, Underwater Clown Priests (UCP?), mentions of past drug addiction, they'd be moirails if this wasn't Humanstuck tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26741641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: When Karkat first met his boyfriend, he never thought to guess he was dealing with a fish-person.  He thought he was meeting, you know.  Just...   just some sort of boardwalk Juggalo, who was sitting where he wanted to walk.
Relationships: Eridan Ampora & Karkat Vantas, Gamzee Makara/Karkat Vantas, Kankri Vantas & Karkat Vantas, occasional - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	Bring the Ocean to You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bujor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bujor/gifts).



> Hi there!!! Thank you for reading. :) I hope you're staying safe and doing as well as possible!!! Sorry for any and all mistakes I might’ve made/anything I might’ve gotten weird.
> 
> A couple things:  
> 1\. Marvus + the Revolution here stems from one line in his Friendsim route..... where he talks about how he thinks the clowns might be able to overthrow HIC's rule if they band together~  
> 2\. I decided to gift this one to Bujor!!! Hi, Bujor!

When Karkat Vantas first met his boyfriend — loitering around the soggy boardwalk outside town, hanging his bare feet off the edge so seaweed tangled between his toes, listening to clown rap on headphones and buying ice cream off street vendors, licking the gooey chocolatey stuff from his fingers like he had no shame at all — he never thought to guess he was dealing with a fish-person. A... a fucking _merman_. Sounds like absolute bullshit, right? Karkat thought he was meeting, you know. Just... just some sort of boardwalk Juggalo, who was sitting where he wanted to walk.

A boardwalk Juggalo with sea salt crusting in his long, dark curls, and unfocused eyes; a boardwalk Juggalo who would be living with Karkat, just give it a while, and who he would learn sometimes murmured uncanny things in his sleep. This was Gamzee Makara, and someday Karkat would know all his favorite horror-comedy movies, and that he tended to run infuriatingly late everyplace, and that if he ducked his head under the water in the bathtub and started to breathe like fishes do his protective transformation magic would slip. Gamzee’s gangly legs would melt into a sinuous, winding tail, splattering bubble bath on the wall tile and absolutely ruining whatever swim trunks he was wearing for the demonstration. His mouth could distend like a gulper eel’s, if he wanted it to; his scales were purplish grey. He didn’t bleed red, and he didn’t like eating cooked meat. He bragged about Karkat to the ragtag crew of mutual friends they made in that town, and he practiced rubbing tension knots out of Karkat’s neck until no one else could do it better. 

But at first, Gamzee was an oceanside stranger, and if Karkat had seen his true face to start with he would have choked. Spat that the cryptid-hunting podcast his friend Eridan from high school ran had been right all along. But by the time Karkat saw Gamzee’s twitching, crooked tail... truly, _really_... he was mostly just frustrated he didn’t have anyplace better to swim than the bathtub. 

Gamzee couldn’t wander the ocean, anymore, after all. 

More on that later. 

Karkat had been showing his brother Kankri the sights around town when he first practically tripped over Gamzee Makara. He’d recently moved to the area, and his coworker said there were usually carnival games hanging nearby this particular boardwalk. Fortune tellers, cheap jewelry stands with lots of shells and mother-of-pearl involved. Sea monster skeletons on display, and anatomical renderings of the merfolk people said came ashore to hunt whoever wouldn’t be missed, sometimes. Nightmare visions, serpentine and closer to the truth than Karkat knew. But still: not _quite_ accurate, truth be fucking told. 

Maybe Karkat had just wanted to feel Wordly, bringing his brother here. Like he knew the secrets of this town and could hand them over to Kankri all casually, like recommending artsy bookstores and little-known restaurants with interestingly-named mixed drinks. Truthfully, Karkat liked hanging around his apartment when he wasn’t at work, and Kankri knew it. Karkat was miserable out here at the boardwalk on this hot, hot day, slathered up in sunscreen and scowling across the blinding sea. 

“Um. _Excuse us?_ ” Karkat had said, shooting that scowl down at the guy who would become his boyfriend. And Gamzee’d grinned up at him, huge and sloppy and curious, a mouth full of lying flat human teeth. He’d shaded his eyes with a sticky hand that was only a little bit webbed, looking from Karkat’s souvenir bag to his exhausted eyes. 

“Absolutely, my brother. Excused, yeah,” Gamzee said. “You gonna jump off the motherfucking pier? I used to do that shit, too.”

“What?! Does it look like I’m —? No. Just. Move, alright?”

Kankri had leaned around Karkat, then, and invited Gamzee along to stare out at the horizon from the edge of the pier with them, hunting that shifting skyline for an apparently-famous lighthouse. Maybe he thought that was the most diplomatic way to end the conversation... maybe he was tired of Karkat trying to prove that moving out here had been a good choice, and he totally knew what he was doing, obviously. Either way, Gamzee unfolded to his feet — disarmingly tall, and pulling a pair of what looked like rubber clown shoes out of the air — and said yeah, sure, why the fuck not? They watched the lighthouse disappear behind a cruise ship and then emerge, stately and older than the town where Karkat was living. They watched waves churn from the end of the pier, that roiling open ocean. Seabirds tumbled above them, sometimes clutching stolen bagels and shit. 

And then... when they left to check out a history museum Karkat never would’ve thought to get tickets for if Kankri hadn’t been visiting... Gamzee came too. He rode on the Ferris wheel with them, feet still squelching in those huge rubber shoes. He was irritatingly easy to talk to, and as the day went on Karkat sort of forgot he wasn’t supposed to be there. They got sushi at a restaurant Kankri said had decent enough reviews; conversations got stupid and playful, and Kankri opened up to Gamzee about how his friends were doing, how things were with his blog... casual in a way he hadn’t managed to be when it was just Karkat. 

Things weren’t... bad... somehow. This was the guy who was going to become Karkat’s boyfriend, and by the end of the night Karkat had complained about work, and given him his phone number, and listened to one (1) clown rap song with Gamzee’s headphones held up next to his ears but not quite getting crammed inside. When asked what he did with his own time, Gamzee talked about writing raps, and fishing off that dirty pier... or maybe running errands for someone he started to call “the Witch” but then — catching himself — called “Feferi.” It was Feferi who cast the spells that allowed Gamzee to look human-ish, Karkat would learn, later on. She took a little pity on the clown church that had tried to overthrow her mother. Exiled as they were, all those laughing priests. 

If Gamzee had said, _“I used to be a clown — hundreds of fucking court jesters, you know, brother?”_ Karkat might have snorted his iced tea through his nose. And if Gamzee had said, _“I used to be a priest, serving the twofold Mirthful Messiahs of the deep, where the pressure would crack human bones apart,”_ Karkat might not have invited him out on another excursion with Kankri the next day. But Gamzee didn’t say any of that, and Kankri was going to be in town for a tense, awkward-monologue-heavy week. Karkat asked if Gamzee was interested in touring a candy factory, or going on a nature hike or something. Gamzee said, “What are you, some kinda actual fucking miracle? A gift from the M — a gift from God?” Which was a weird thing to say, Karkat decided, but... fuck, this was happening anyway, wasn’t it? 

They got to know each other well enough, by the end of things. I mean, they would’ve had to: I already told you, this was the guy who was going to become Karkat’s boyfriend. Karkat showed Gamzee the screenplay he was writing, and took him to a company holiday party where everyone else would have dates and Karkat didn’t want to be left out. Got him wearing a suit, too, and the sort of shoes people in offices wore. Karkat vented to Gamzee when it would’ve been too humiliating to call Kankri, or Eridan, or anyone else for that matter. Gamzee listened, eyes soft and unfathomable, cheek cupped in his palm. He nodded a lot, and tried to give decent advice. 

Karkat didn’t know it, but Gamzee thought about explaining how he’d followed the rebel commander Marvus Xoloto when the clown church rose up against their empress _so many times_ before he finally even just said, “I can’t go home again.” He considered how he’d tell Karkat about the empress’s wars, about her hungers, about her hate; he wondered how he’d convince Karkat that it was _motherfucking_ _crucial_ he get those little spell-vials from Feferi the Witch without making this new human guy think he was a drug addict again. Gamzee hadn’t been able to touch ocean-born drugs in years, just like he hadn’t been able to give himself back into that ancient water. Who knew how restless the Messiahs were getting, with no clown church to feed and calm them? Who knew what Karkat would make of any of this, if Gamzee ever managed to get beyond listening, and thinking of hopefully-useful responses, and talking about the lore behind the clown rap he’d learned to love now that he and his fellow devoted couldn’t chant their righteous harshwhimsical scripture into the dark anymore. 

They’d spread out across the coastline. The clown church, you know. It was safer, that way, for now, so the empress didn’t think they were getting any ideas again... although of course they were, and of course Marvus still thought they had a chance to win or else why hadn’t she managed to kill them? Feferi traveled around in a custom fuchsia PT Cruiser with shark fangs and gold bangles hung in the rearview mirror, and she traded favors and odd jobs for whatever the exiles said they needed. How was Gamzee supposed to get in deep, explaining any of that? Karkat wouldn’t stick around for sea wars, for the painful tics Gamzee’s old addictions left behind. For Marvus’s battle strategies, and the rituals Gamzee still dreamt about, and... fuck. Karkat wouldn’t stick around at all, would he? 

Karkat didn’t know it, but when Gamzee said, “I can’t go home again,” and he blinked, swallowed, answered, “I have... I have a couch. You can sleep there, but only for a few nights, got it?” Gamzee heard the safety in his voice. It was a funny thing. Karkat knew Gamzee couldn’t go home again, and before asking _why_ — whether he’d lost his apartment, or whatever the fuck — he _took him home_ with him _._ Taught him the code to get into the apartment complex; made him a key that Gamzee found waiting on the coffee table next to a note that just read, “THE DISHES BETTER BE DONE WHEN I GET BACK.” 

And in time, Karkat learned Gamzee’s _actual_ story, and maybe he even believed it. Mostly. In time, Gamzee stopped expecting Karkat to drift away from him, like human ships passing ghostlike through the sea. The first time Gamzee asked Karkat if he wouldn’t mind meeting with the Witch — with Feferi — to pick up “his prescription,” Gamzee had just spent the whole last night driving home from Kankri’s place. From Karkat’s hometown. They’d gone to visit for Mr. Vantas’s, the dad’s, birthday, and Gamzee’d helped cook, and played board games with cousins, and tried not to embarrass Karkat in just _so many_ lively arguments. Everyone in the Vantas family seemed to like arguing, and Gamzee’s peacekeeping, smoothing-over enthusiasm wasn’t exactly what those motherfuckers were all up and looking for. 

Karkat and Gamzee had listened to all these episodes of Eridan Ampora’s cryptid-hunting podcast in the car on the way back home. Yeah, _home_. At first, Gamzee thought he and Karkat would be switching off behind the wheel, but... nah. Karkat was out like a light, halfway through Eridan’s furiously-ranting episode about that time he definitely fired his heirloom harpoon gun at a celestial being. An angel, he kept on saying. An angel of crackling white light and static, that he’d caught red-handed perched on a telephone wire by his university. Now, let’s look back at the _historical precedent_ — !

Gamzee had snickered over at Karkat, so exhausted after a day of reasonably-friendly screaming, and turned the podcast down, rumbling on just barely loud enough for him to hear it. It was funniest listening to episodes where Eridan tried to talk about merfolk, Gamzee’d learned, by now. It probably meant something beautiful that Karkat and Eridan talked on the phone every week, at least, but still Eridan got most of his fish-people-related facts wrong. Karkat hadn’t handed Gamzee’s secrets away. Karkat’s mouth hung open just a little as he slept, and his sweater sleeves were shoved up past his freckled elbows. 

But Gamzee’d been driving all night, and his appointment to meet the Witch was stupidly early, this time. So Karkat went, and he brought along a special request, too. He’d been thinking about how Gamzee hadn’t been able to spread his winding tail out underwater in ages; hadn’t been able to stretch the aching snakelike joints, hadn’t been able to fan the murky betta fish fins along the sides and — Karkat knew — running up his back like decorative ribbons. Fins on his wrists, and claws like dark glass. 

Meeting Feferi was only the second time Karkat had ever come across somebody Gamzee’s same species... at least so far as _he_ knew. She recognized him before he even introduced himself, and behind her cheerful plastic goggles her eyes were like the darkest part of the ocean. An abyss. Her smiles were unnervingly wide, and her hair seemed to fill the front of the car behind her, smelling like incense and ocean water. She just rolled down her window, to pass over Gamzee’s vial, at first, but then once Karkat got talking she bundled her hair into a scrunchie and ordered him to climb in next to her. 

Feferi’s tiny, webbed feet were crossed under the steering wheel. She held her face in her hands for a second, and said she was sorry she hadn’t thought of what Karkat was asking for sooner. All the exiles, all the clown church: they’d get back to the ocean, to their worship, someday. She wanted to be sure of it. Her mother’s kingdom could change. Could _be changed,_ through force and eldritch godly power, through rage. Karkat believed it, didn’t he? Feferi would help with whatever magic she had, even if everything they’d thrown together hadn’t been enough to win last time. Just to get out alive. But Feferi’d been learning new tricks, and Marvus Xoloto had been plotting a second act, too. An encore. 

The idea of Gamzee returning to the ocean made Karkat’s stomach turn, made his mouth twitch down into a wince. He knew Gamzee would drag himself back to their apartment, if he could, but he also knew his boyfriend wasn’t as strong as he used to be, before addictions, before exile. He knew Gamzee’d been unconventional, way back when, often alone even among the other clown priests. He knew if Gamzee didn’t come home, nothing would ever feel the same again, and... humiliating as it was... he knew Feferi could read that fierce, clenched-tight protectiveness in his face. 

She gave him what he asked for free of charge. It looked like a blue plastic compact mirror, but she swore it would open up into a deep saltwater pool if Karkat found a space big enough to hold it. Someplace secret, where only the stars could see. Someplace maybe like the parking lot behind an abandoned mall; someplace like a forest clearing, where the trees would fold tight around them and deer would drift by, flicking their ears. Feferi explained how to collapse the pool back into a mirror, and Karkat caught himself imagining Gamzee moving through cold dark water, lost in his thoughts, moonlight glinting liquid off his scales. Karkat reading a book over on the side, or something. He imagined Gamzee slithering silently up to the edge of the pool, and then shooting out a terrifyingly quick carnivore arm — pulling Karkat in with him, maybe, or else just lifting himself up against the wall to kiss his cheek. 

Karkat stuffed the compact mirror-that-was-a-miniature-ocean and Gamzee’s “prescription” vial into his hoodie pocket. He told Feferi thanks, and she said he should come by again, with Gamzee next time. They could get coffee. Boba tea. Who knows?

When Gamzee woke up, finally, back at their apartment, Karkat was playing video games with Eridan over video chat and hearing all about his latest cryptid-hunting podcast project: sea witches. Karkat paused his mic for a second, shot Gamzee a furtive, guilty look. He said, “I have a surprise for you. Later tonight. You up for it?”

Yeah, brother. Yeah, of fucking course!


End file.
